It was unreal, grotesquely unreal, that morning skies which dawned so tenderly blue could be profaned with cannon smoke that hung over the town like low thunder clouds, that warm noontides filled with the piercing sweetness of massed honeysuckle and climbing roses could be so fearful, as shells screamed into the streets, bursting like the crack of doom, throwing iron splinters hundreds of yards, blowing people and animals to bits.
Would it please you if I said your eyes were twin goldfish bowls filled to the brim with the clearest green water and that when the fish swim to the top, as they are doing now, you are devilishly charming?
Oh, Rhett, why do there have to be wars? It would have been so much better for the Yankees to pay for the darkies – or even for us to give them the darkies free of charge than to have this happen.” “It isn’t the darkies, Scarlett. They’re just the excuse. There’ll always be wars because men love wars. Women don’t, but men do – yea, passing the love of women.
She had the temper of a Tartar and the rages of a wild cat and, at such times, she did not seem to care what she said or how much it hurt.
Talking to Rhett was comparable only to one thing, the feeling of ease and comfort afforded by a pair of old slippers after dancing in a pair too tight.
He looked on people, and he neither liked nor disliked them. He looked on life and was neither heartened nor saddened. He accepted the universe and his place in it for what they were and, shrugging, turned to his music and books and his better world.
I’ve got something that most pretty ladies haven’t got – and that’s a mind that’s made up.
Suddenly she was standing at Tara again with the world about her ears, desolate with the knowledge that she could not face life without the terrible strength of the weak, the gentle, the tender-hearted.
I want you more than I have ever wanted any woman – and I’ve waited longer for you than I’ve ever waited for any woman.
She knew she had changed too, but not as they had changed, and it puzzled her. She sat and watched them and she felt herself an alien among them, as alien and lonely as if she had come from another world, speaking a language they did not understand and she not understanding theirs.
Always providing you have enough courage – or money – you can do without a reputation.
So I think I’ll remove him from your mind forever, this way. I’ll put my hands, so, on each side of your head and I’ll smash your skull between them like a walnut and that will blot him out.
Better to be tormented with memories of Ashley than Charleston accents.
It’s a poor person and a poor nation that sits down and cries because life isn’t precisely what they expected it to be.
He could no more resist pricking the conceits, the hypocrisies and the flamboyant patriotism of those about him than a small boy can resist putting a pin into a balloon. He neatly deflated the pompous and exposed the ignorant and the bigoted, and he did it in such subtle ways, drawing his victims out by his seemingly courteous interest, that they never were quite certain what had happened until they stood exposed as windy, high flown and slightly ridiculous.
You’re a pretty person, Scarlett,” he said. “Especially when you are meditating devilment.
Beloved,” she whispered, “I am coming home to you.
It was one thing to know that Ashley was engaged but it was another to hear people talk about it so casually.
This is what happens when you look back to happiness, this pain, this heart-break, this discontent.
It was not the lifting up of her heart to God that brought this balm, for religion went no more than lip deep with her. It was the sight of her mother’s serene face upturned to the throne of God and His saints and angels, praying for blessings on those whom she loved. When Ellen intervened with Heaven, Scarlett felt certain that Heaven heard. Ellen.